Chapter IV Excerpt

…What he could touch seemed familiar. It was wet, sticky, and all over him but it was also pleasantly cool, which was not what he was used to. The toddler-boy tried to pull his arms underneath him, to push himself upright, but they were too heavy, like deadweights. He slipped and collapsed face-down in a pat that reminded him strongly of his bottom-doings. He wanted to cry. Then he wanted to stop crying, right away. Either made little difference since his nose was half-plugged with the brown and his throat was dry like the film-stuff caught beneath his shirt. He rolled onto his back and tugged at it, but it pinched hard at his skin. Now there was no stopping his pathetic, spluttering bawls. In the middle of that emotion he lost his balance again and toppled off the bank onto something hard; it scraped at his legs and his raw rump, forcing the napkin to ooze a bit inside the worn cotton of his trouser.

The wooshing was still all around him, now gently flopping in and out of his hair. He had never felt anything so glorious like it before. His cheeks were tickled by the green dangling from above: thin greens, round greens, wooshing greens. Trying to push them away from his face the boy saw that his tiny hands were red all over and bumpy. He pulled up his head to look at his hands closer, heavy and smarting, but he felt dazed… sudden rushed-back the dark as his crown fell again, dragging him down and cracking on the hard surface…